University of Kentucky UKnowledge United States History History 2002 When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War John Patrick Daly Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Daly, John Patrick, "When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War" (2002). United States History. 150. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_united_states_history/150 Religion in the South John B. Boles, Series Editor When Slavery Was Called Freedom Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War John Patrick Daly THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OP KENTUCKY Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 2002 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices:The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 07 06 05 04 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Daly, John, 1964- When slavery was called freedom : evangelicalism, proslavery, and the causes of the Civil War /John Daly. p. cm.—(Religion in the South) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8131-2241-4 (alk. paper) ; ISBN 0-8131-9093-2 (pbk : alk. paper) 1. Slavery—Moral and ethical aspects—Southern States—History—19th century. 2. Slavery—Moral and ethical aspects—United States—History—19th century. 3. Slavery —Southern States—Justification. 4. Evangelicalism-—Political aspects— Southern States—History—19th century. 5. Evangelicalism—Political aspects—United States—History—19th century. 6. Southern States—Politics and government— 1775-1865. 7. Southern States—Intellectual life—19th century. 8. Southern States— Moral conditions. 9. Antislavery movements—United States—History—19th century. 10. United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Causes. I.Title. II. Series. E449.D23 2002 973.7'11—dc21 2001007143 For Elizabeth McCarthy Daly Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Freedom and Evangelical Culture in the South 6 2. The Post-1831 Birth of Evangelical Proslavery 30 3. Answering Abolitionists, Defending Slaveholders 57 4. The Evangelical Vision of the South and Its Future 73 5. Evangelical Proslavery, Free Labor, and Disunion, 1850—1861 111 6. The Proslavery Formula and the Test of War, 1860-1865 136 155 Epilogue 159 Notes 185 Selected Bibliography 203 Index Acknowledgments Many individuals and institutions have contributed to the production of this book. A special thanks is due the staffs at the many libraries and archives where I have worked, in particular the staffs of the Southern Historical Collection in Chapel Hill and the Historical Foundation of the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches at Montreat, North Carolina. Crucial financial support was provided by the Farish Fellowship, the Mellon Foundation, the McGinty Foundation, and the James and Carolyn Fitz- Gerald Foundation. All of my history colleagues and students in the vari- ous colleges and universities in which I have taught in the past seven years offered welcome support: Rice University, Texas Southern University, University of St. Thomas, University of Houston, Austin College, and Louisiana Tech University. My current colleagues in the History Depart- ment of the State University of New York, College at Brockport, pro- vided an ideal atmosphere for the completion of the project.Three mentors and friends—Thomas L. Haskell, John B. Boles, and Stephen Webre— have contributed so much to my professional, intellectual, and personal development that this book's completion is only a minor example of all they have done for me. I cannot begin to thank them enough. Kendra Winkelstein, Robert L. Daly, Robert W. Daly, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown all read the manuscript closely and offered key suggestions, though any errors are, of course, mine alone. Finally, the book is dedicated to the master editor and Scrabble player who has always been there for me. Introduction Evangelical Proslavery and the Causes of the Civil War he year 1831 marked a new epoch in proslavery. America's fiercest Tmoral debate erupted over the issue of slavery and was intimately linked to the sectional crisis that brought civil war thirty years later. The nearly suicidal violence of that conflict implies that the combatants dis- agreed about the nature of morality itself, but that was not the case. Deep political divisions, after all, do not necessarily stem from deep cultural divisions.1 Antebellum political debates were moralized, and moral de- bates were politicized as the sectional crisis deepened, but, as David Pot- ter has noted, America at the outset of the Civil War had more "cultural homogeneity" than ever before.2 An analysis of the dominant southern proslavery position confirms this cultural convergence and thereby dis- solves the truism that "the South became increasingly isolated from the progressive ideology of the Western World."3 For a hundred years after the Civil War, politicians and historians analyzing the period made much of the antebellum South s alleged de- partures from national ideals. Their emphasis on aberration salvaged the continuity of the nation's history and moral mission.4 Some critics held that southern culture had deviated not only from the tenor and progres- sive course of American institutions but from modern global patterns of development as well.'' Such thinking was common both among scholars who were horrified at the backwardness of the South and among 2 When Slavery Was Called Freedom southerners who believed their region had, with characteristic and com- mendable stubbornness, resisted the cultural power of a post-bellum world that held it in scorn.6 Recent studies demonstrate, however, that the an- tebellum South participated in mainstream nineteenth-century moral, intellectual, and socio-economic developments.The region's leaders were often proponents of current doctrines.7 Southerners, then, sought to com- pete with the North for economic power in a thoroughly contemporary spirit. A modern foundation for the South's moral position was laid out in pamphlets and pulpits before the war began, as southerners explained how slavery had arisen in keeping with the "genius of the age."8 The South and the North drew different practical conclusions from the same evangelical moral premises. As religious historian Samuel Hill has noted, "only a society so united could be so divided."9 Antebellum cultural unity was particularly evident in the northern and southern use of religious and moral language. In an era of national "evangelical hegemony," Hill found the vocabularies of the regions to be "nearly indistinguishable."11' How then did moral disagreements occur? How did southerners preach equality and democracy and not feel like hypocrites? How did they disclaim responsibility for the plight of their slaves? Why did northerners feel threatened by a slave economy that did not directly involve them? And why did Americans fight and die, so vio- lently and with so much commitment, for causes that began in a moral debate about these issues? Evangelical moralism, which dominated the era, solves the riddle of these questions. The book that follows studies the content and influence of evangelicals' proslavery ideas. The first chapter defines my use of the term "evangeli- cal" and the central place of the evangelical impulse in antebellum Ameri- can culture. I argue that the movement characterized the era. I therefore employ the term "evangelical" to denote a sweeping cultural movement that celebrated individualism and moral self-discipline, rather than to de- note technical aspects of certain Protestant churches and their theology. The chapter also describes the distinctive role of evangelicalism in the South. The second chapter surveys the history of proslavery thought in the United States and the new tradition of proslavery ideology that coalesced after the year 1831. History textbooks often repeat the facile and inaccu- rate argument that the South defended slavery as a "necessary evil" be- fore 1831 and then became defensive, after abolitionist assaults, and argued Introduction after 1831 that slavery was a "positive good." I found little support for this argument in the voluminous proslavery documents produced by evangelicals.11 Southerners typically defended slavery only as it was prac- ticed in the southern states and rarely argued that slavery would last for- ever or that it was a feature of an ideal society. The arguments the South produced after 1831, however, differed significantly from Revolutionary and Early National Era positions. New spokesmen, with new social and moral outlooks, addressed the morality of slavery after 1831. There also were simply far